2014•ACM SIGPLAN NoticesRequires access

Using JavaScript and WebCL for numerical computations

F. Fawzia Khan, Vincent Foley-Bourgon, Sujay Kathrotia, Erick Lavoie, Laurie Hendren

Abstract

From its modest beginnings as a tool to validate forms, JavaScript is now an industrial-strength language used to power online applications such as spreadsheets, IDEs, image editors and even 3D games. Since all modern web browsers support JavaScript, it provides a medium that is both easy to distribute for developers and easy to access for users. This paper provides empirical data to answer the question: Is JavaScript fast enough for numerical computations? By measuring and comparing the runtime performance of benchmarks representative of a wide variety of scientific applications, we show that sequential JavaScript is within a factor of 2 of native code. Parallel code using WebCL shows speed improvements of up to 2.28 over JavaScript for the majority of the benchmarks.

About this research paper

What this paper is about

Why it matters

OpenAlex reports 23 citations for this work. Citation counts describe recorded attention and do not establish research quality.

Key contribution

A contribution statement is not available in the OpenAlex record.

Method / approach

Method details are not available in the OpenAlex metadata.

Main findings

Findings are not separately available in the OpenAlex metadata.

Limitations

Limitations are not available in the OpenAlex metadata.

Applications

Application details are not available in the OpenAlex metadata.

Available abstract

Key concepts: JavaScript, Computer science, Unobtrusive JavaScript, Programming language, Computation, Code (set theory), Web application, Variety (cybernetics)